News Mash-Up - Week # 10

• • New sanctions have been applied on Russian Games Industry: Epic games, PlayStation and Nintendo, Take Two, Ubisoft have suspended sales from its stores. Bungie has stopped sales of Destiny 2 in Russia and Belarus. Angry Birds maker Rovio has removed all of its games from app stores in Russia and Belarus.

  • More companies have pledged donations for Ukraine: Itch.io has raised over $1 million and has set a new target of $4 million. Warsaw-based game developer QLOC announced a donation of 1 million PLN. Japanese game publisher Koei Tecmo announced that it has donated $500,000. Bandai Namco has pledged $852,000.

  • The Russian government proposed a new law that will not enforce actions against piracy. The new proposed law will be called "Priority Action Plan for Ensuring the Development of the Russian Economy in the Conditions of External Sanctions Pressure". If adopted, the proposal will impact copyright, patent, and trademark owners whose actions are deemed to be against Russia’s interests.

  • On the 9th March Sony released 21 minute State of Play video. 12 games were highlighted. Only 2 games were PS5 PlayStation exclusive, Forspoken and the free add-on for Returnal (Returnal Ascension). All games showcased were from 3rd party publishers. 4 games were new IP: Ghostwire Tokyo (first person fighting game), Gigabash (brawler), Trek To Yomi (2D Samurai) and The Diofield Chronicle (strategy).

  • Amazon’s Lost Ark MMO (released in early February) banned over 1 million accounts for using bots. The ban has resulted with a reduction in server waiting times.

  • Amazon is in talks with Sony in planning to turn the God of War franchise into a live-action TV show for its Prime Video service. Sony is now in full swing in leveraging its movie and TV studios with its game franchises.

  • According to data released by SteamSpy, Elden Ring has sold over 10 million copies on Steam in just its first week alone.

  • Call of Duty: Warzone will come to mobile. Activision has announced that in-house developer Digital Legends Entertainment will make the game. No release date revealed. The current Call of Duty Mobile game has made an estimated $850 million since its release in October 2019.

  • Atari has acquired MobyGames from Anstream for $1.5 million. MobyGames is a depository for fan created video game artwork.

  • Mouse and keyboard support is coming to Xbox Cloud Gaming, complementing touchscreen and controller input.
    
    

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Week commencing Monday 14 March 2022